Work Text:
The first time she held a violin, she was three. Her father had been rehearsing in his study, and she had teetered in, leaving sticky handprints on the glass panes of the french doors.
He had hesitated when he noticed her, but something about the fascination in her face must have prompted him to finish his waltz. He glided across the room in time to the music, the soft blanket of the notes settling over them.
When he finished, he sat on the floor and she’d crawled into his lap, all giggles and wide eyes as he placed the too large instrument in her hands and allowed her ridiculously grubby toddler hands to pluck cluelessly at the strings.
That was the kind of man her father had been. An otherworldly, talented musician, full of warmth and dedication to his daughter that rivaled any passion he’d ever known. He’d asked if she wanted to learn and a year later, she’d been gifted her very own violin.
Music flowed through her blood, carried the very essence of her soul. It was there for her when the world around her crumbled, it helped her mend the pieces of herself she hadn’t been able to keep together.
For years, she hadn’t been able to reconcile his death. Her mother, bless her soul, and tried her best despite her own grief, but music was the only thing that had made sense to her through those times.
She thought that the more she poured into her music, the closer she could get to that moment, years ago, when it had just been her, her father, and the quiet hum of the violin. When she practiced in his old rehearsal room, she could feel his ghost dancing around her.
She chased his steps through the room day in and day out, searching endlessly for what she had lost until she herself became lost within the chords.
In those times, her mother would often take them out to the countryside to visit one of her oldest friends from college on her farm. The woman, Risa, would spoil them with homemade sweets and whisk them down a trail at the end of the property that led to a secluded waterfall and small watering hole.
They’d spend hours there, swimming under the sun and escaping under the trees when it became too unbearable. The cold and clear waters made as much sense to her as the music.
She became water, floating, drifting.
She remembered, distantly, a pair of eyes watching her each time she arrived at the farm with her mother. A flash of dark hair, and a beaming smile that would crash into her each time they visited.
It wasn’t until she was 10 that Michiru learned of the real reasons for all their visits. Risa was dying. She’d been fighting her illness for some time, but her condition had worsened significantly in recent years since their visits had begun.
When Michiru was 11, the visits slowed. When they did visit, Risa was often bedridden and her mother would spend most of the visit by her side.
Michiru was left to her own devices, often accompanying Risa’s daughter to the watering hole or to the fields out back where she would kick a ball between sticks she had propped up at different ends to act as goals.
They never talked much, the girl was already quite soft spoken, but in the time that Michiru had known her, she’d begun to withdraw. The beaming smile that normally greeted her had dulled, and the mischievous eyes that used to follow her around and wait for opportunities to splash her with water had become guarded and aloof.
Sometimes, she would bring her violin and the four of them would sit in Risa’s room, the melodies sweeping through the house with bittersweet notes. The four of them would pile onto the bed and watch some sappy movie their mothers adored.
Risa’s daughter would fall asleep, curled between them, and Michiru always thought she looked so much smaller in those moments than she ever allowed herself to be when she was awake.
By the time Michiru was 12, their visits to the farm ceased entirely. Instead, they traded the cozy farmhouse for sterile hospital walls. Initially, she’d refused to step foot into the hospital, unwilling to relive those memories.
Her mother had leaned forward and rested her hands on her shoulders. She’d explained, while holding back tears, that it was okay to be afraid, and asked Michiru if she was willing to show courage in this moment. If not for herself, then for Risa and her daughter.
Michiru had swallowed hard, but nodded, and followed her mother inside.
Most of the time they visited, Risa would be in some kind of medically induced sleep to help ease her pain. Her mother would scoop up Risa’s daughter from the chair next to the bed and carry her down to the cafeteria.
At first, the girl was inconsolable, unable to be removed from the room until her grandfather promised he would protect her mother until she got back from eating. He would thank Michiru and her mother and smile sadly as they left.
They’d order shitty hospital meals and sit in the cafeteria, and Neda would try her best to keep the conversation light. Risa’s daughter would poke at the lumpy mashed potatoes and canned asparagus and talk quietly about her grandfather, the farm, or soccer.
Mentions of her mother would make her stiffen with the kind of fear that Michiru recognized in her former self, and topics related to her father would be shut down with hostility.
Neda would only squeeze the girl’s hand with the kind of motherly understanding that didn’t need to be spoken aloud.
Within that same year, Risa passed, and the next time Michiru saw her daughter was at the funeral. She stood up at the front the entire time next to her father, her stone cold expression a near perfect match to his.
Risa’s funeral was the first time Michiru remembered seeing her mother truly angry. At the private wake for close friends and family members, she’d slapped Risa’s husband clear across the face and berated him for heartlessly forcing his daughter to endure the entire funeral on display to everyone.
She’d grabbed Michiru and Risa’s daughter’s hands and dragged the two of them out the door and to their car, instructing their driver to take them to the nearest diner. She’d given the driver a list of various foods and sent him into the place.
As soon as they were truly alone, Risa’s daughter had burst into tears for the first time that day. The only thing Michiru could think to do was hold her hand.
“Rei, sweetie, I’ve got you. We’re right here for you,” Neda had said quietly as the girl’s sobs filled the car.
Over the next few years, the visits to the countryside resumed, though not as frequently as they had been in the height of Risa’s illness.
Neda’s business was taking off, Michiru was starting to audition for orchestras and prestigious music schools, and Rei was getting busier with school and soccer.
Neda made a dedicated effort to visit at least twice a year, but she would send Michiru on her own at least once or twice under the excuse that they were the closest thing to family the girl had outside of her grandfather.
Michiru suspected she secretly hoped they would develop something between them that went beyond familiarity, though, if that was her goal, she succeeded.
Their first kiss was when Michiru was 14 and Rei was 12. It was one of the summers her mother had sent her on her own to stay at the farmhouse for two weeks. She’d been reading some silly teenage romance novel and wondered aloud what was the big deal about kissing anyways.
Boys, she’d said, were a terrible disappointment and always led with way too much tongue.
Rei had looked at her quizzically and, having surpassed Michiru in height earlier that year, tilted her head down at her and kissed her.
Michiru had jumped from the shock of it, and the two had stared at each other for a long moment before either of them dared to speak.
“I don’t get what you’re complaining about,” Rei had finally said, a small smirk flitting across her face before it disappeared under that cool, distanced mask that even at the age of 12, she’d nearly perfected.
Michiru had blushed so many different shades of red she’d had to yank open the refrigerator and get a glass of water to drink just to avoid having to look at Rei.
Something about them changed after that, the casual closeness they’d always shared became more intimate and seemed to envelope her in a warmth she hadn’t felt before. Kisses stolen in the dark corners of charity balls, summers spent lounging together by the watering hole, hours tucked away in the barn as Michiru practiced and Rei lounged in a hammock.
They never spoke about it, like it was something too delicate to break, but those moments burned themselves into her body in ways she could never unlearn.
When she was 17, it became something more than just kisses and falling asleep in each other’s arms. The fire that Rei kept on such a short leash burned through her, and Michiru melted right along with it.
She’d always known that they had been destined to be each other’s first loves. Those purple eyes were impossible for her to resist, and they understood each other’s deepest pain in a way no one else could.
But she’d also known that they were never destined to be anything more than that.
Rei started to pull away even more throughout high school, a result of her father moving her to the city.
Michiru was busy traveling the world with the orchestra, and the few times she did visit the farmhouse, Rei was rarely there.
She couldn’t pin down exactly when she lost Rei, but somewhere down the line, she had. She’d had her, thought she might have her for an eternity, but the moment she turned around to face her eternity, it had escaped from her grasp.
The thing between them they’d never vocalized would remain as memories, permanently etched into their minds, but never to exist outside of its time.
There were times, even now, that she’d wake up, legs tangled with Haruka’s, and the echoes of a childhood kiss on her lips.
She’d look over at Haruka, the pink morning light casting her in a heavenly glow and highlighting the pale golden strands of hair falling over her eyes, and feel a surge of warmth. A sense of belonging and love she’d never known, and yet sometimes Haruka’s lips would taste to her like lavender fields and waterfalls.
There were times she’d pick up her father’s violin and trace his steps once more, and she’d find herself instead in a room in the farmhouse, the girl she loved curled up on the bed, or she’d be dancing through the barn, kicking up dust and straw and that mess of dark hair would match her step for step, an endless loop of spinning toward her and dancing away.
She’d step through her parents’ house and find pieces of that girl scattered everywhere. Faded old polaroids of the two of them and their mothers tucked into the breakfast nook in the farmhouse, the four of them passed out in Risa’s bed, a mess of blankets and spilled popcorn. A vase sitting on the dining room table painted with lavender fields.
And in those small, quiet moments, she’d curse her own cowardice for not chasing after that girl, for being a foolish girl herself who didn’t understand a thing about love. She’d wonder if she’d turned around sooner if she could have saved them, or perhaps she shouldn’t have turned around at all.
Music flowed through her like water, cool and reflective, it steadied her when the world became too much. It cried the emotions she wasn’t able to herself, and it was the closest thing she had to prayers.
Perhaps, in another life, another time, her song might have reached her, but now it was between her and the gods.